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Nuclear Energy Conference & Expo (NECX)
September 8–11, 2025
Atlanta, GA|Atlanta Marriott Marquis
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From operator to entrepreneur: David Garcia applies outage management lessons
David Garcia
If ComEd’s Zion plant in northern Illinois hadn’t closed in 1998, David Garcia might still be there, where he got his start in nuclear power as an operator at age 24.
But in his ninth year working there, Zion closed, and Garcia moved on to a series of new roles—including at Wisconsin’s Point Beach plant, the corporate offices of Minnesota’s Xcel Energy, and on the supplier side at PaR Nuclear—into an on-the-job education that he augmented with degrees in business and divinity that he sought later in life.
Garcia started his own company—Waymaker Resource Group—in 2014. Recently, Waymaker has been supporting Holtec’s restart project at the Palisades plant with staffing and analysis. Palisades sits almost exactly due east of the fully decommissioned Zion site on the other side of Lake Michigan and is poised to operate again after what amounts to an extended outage of more than three years. Holtec also plans to build more reactors at the same site.
For Garcia, the takeaway is clear: “This industry is not going away. Nuclear power and the adjacent industries that support nuclear power—and clean energy, period—are going to be needed for decades upon decades.”
In July, Garcia talked with Nuclear News staff writer Susan Gallier about his career and what he has learned about running successful outages and other projects.
J. Dorning
Nuclear Science and Engineering | Volume 33 | Number 1 | July 1968 | Pages 81-92
Technical Paper | doi.org/10.13182/NSE68-A20920
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The pulsed-neutron experiment fundamental mode discrete time-decay constant has been calculated as a function of system size for spherical light water assemblies using realistic H2O scattering models by the discrete-ordinates method. Comparison with experiment shows agreement to be good. The computed energy spectra and angular distributions of the fundamental mode neutron fluxes are discussed and physical interpretations of their behavior are proffered. The effect of including various orders of anisotropy in the scattering kernel is examined. Decay-constant calculations were also performed for a model that neglects chemical binding. The results are compared with those based on models that include binding (and are in good agreement with experiment). The effects of chemical binding in neutron thermalization are shown to be significant by this comparison.